Those students were near ground zero when the American bomb obliterated the city.
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At home on the outskirts of Hiroshima, Takagi was spared.
The visit presented a diplomatic tightrope for a US president trying to make history without ripping open old wounds.
Chiaki said as the meeting between the two leaders didn’t reach any practical solutions and was only aimed at minimizing the side effects of the case, he came to Hiroshima to protest against Obama’s visit.
Three days after the first bombing, an estimated 70,000 people were killed when a second bomb was dropped on Nagasaki. Takagi remembered details like the badly-burned survivors whose skin turned gray.
Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe laid wreaths in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park shortly after Obama’s arrival.
“The scientific revolution that led to the splitting of an atom requires a moral revolution as well”, Obama said in his remarks.
“We remember all the innocent killed in the arc of that awful war and wars that came before, and wars that would follow”.
Takano listened to Obama’s speech at NPR headquarters in Washington, connected to Takagi who was on the line from Hiroshima.
First they should read the essay – Thank God for the Atom Bomb – war historian Paul Fussell wrote on how he felt when, as a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the U.S. army, he and his comrades heard the news that Japan had been nuclear bombed into surrender. They included Takano’s grandparents and parents, all of whom were placed in USA internment camps during the war, along with more than 100,000 other Japanese-Americans.
Takagi settled in Anaheim, Calif., and worked many years at Disneyland.
But in 2002, they traveled together to Hiroshima to visit Takagi’s aging mother.
The Peace Memorial Park includes memorials for the dead, the iconic bombed-out Peace Dome – a building preserved as it looked after the attack – and a museum on the bomb and its aftermath.
When Takagi said she had never visited, Takano hesitated.
As they explored the park, they found a tribute to middle-school teachers and a display of middle-school uniforms, poignant reminders for Takagi.
“We are under the USA nuclear umbrella, so Abe can’t do so much”, Obama said about USA protection of Japan.
President Obama is not one to shy away from historic moments. Now 84, she lives outside Hiroshima. “Abe noted that he did visit the World War II memorial in Washington a year ago and placed a wreath in honor of all those who died during the war”.
Analysts are terming the US President’s visit to Hiroshima as a significant world development, as Obama told the Japanese media earlier that ‘even former adversaries can become the strongest of allies’.
U.S. President Barack Obama, center, accompanied by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, left, shakes hands and talks with Sunao Tsuboi, a survivor of the 1945 Atomic Bombing and chairman of the Hiroshima Prefectural Confedera.
“A tour of Hiroshima is not an apology on America’s behalf”.
Obama said there is a “shared responsibility” to look into the “eye of history” and ask what must be done to prevent another nuclear weapon being used. Within weeks, Japan surrendered, ending the war in the Pacific Theater.
On Wednesday, more than 4,000 Japanese rallied around the U.S. Kadena Air Base in Japan’s southernmost prefecture of Okinawa against the murder of a local woman by an ex-U.S. It marked a breakthrough, but relations between the countries are still fraught.
Japan, meanwhile, still demands that Russian Federation return four Kuril Islands that Moscow seized in August 1945 as Japan was reeling from the US nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Following the remarks, Abe called Obama’s visit courageous and long-awaited. “That action alone can prove he meant what he said today”.
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Meanwhile, neighbors Korea and China, where many feel Japan hasn’t properly atoned for its wartime atrocities, have been critical of the president’s trip. “I think the most significant thing for the current generation that is passing is knowing that today’s leaders are making a serious effort to deal with the past”.
